What internet provider to use when staying in France for 6 months?

Fiber is available almost everywhere in France now, even pretty deep into the countryside. To check if fiber is available on your address you can go to the website Orange (or Sosh) and check availability by filling you address.

The fiber providers are Orange, Sosh, Free, Red by SFR and Bouygues.

At the time of writing Sosh has the cheapest offer, and it being a subsidiary of Orange they also “own” the cables and should be able to make the initial connection as painless as possible. The downside is that you will need to pay 50 euro when cancelling their service and go through the effort of shipping their equipment back. But even with the cancellation fee, it’s by far the best offer and can be cancelled at any time as there is no yearly contract.

The prices seem to constantly change, the table below is just a moment in time and includes the current promotional prices

Note that all providers have extra fees for cancellation and sometimes for activation as well. If you have a yearly contract and switch from one provider to another after the year, the new provider will often cover the cancellation fee of the old provider. In some cases you can get the cancellation fee waived if you have prove that you are moving to another country or to a region that doesn’t have fiber available yet.

We will have to deal with receiving, connecting and then after 6 months returning the router, Sosh will send us a return shipping label at that time, let’s hope that all works smoothly.

If fiber is not available, or if you’re staying less than 6 months, a mobile 4g sim might be a better internet solution. The following providers have monthly contracts that you can cancel at any time. At my address, Lebara and Sosh (both using the Orange network) had better reception. Lebara had the least effort management and cancellation process via their app.